Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana show.
I'm here with Thomas and building off of the episode
that we the Deviation episode from thirty the Thirty Years War,
in the same in the same subject matter, Thomas is
gonna jump in, so take it away, Thomas.
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about.
Speaker 3: The relationship of the Third Right to the Islamic World,
specifically Palestine, and Palestine was absolutely affiliated with the access
powers in direct capacities, and there is very good offices
between the Fear and the Grand Mufti ol Hussini, who,
despite what propaganda and mainstream history suggests he was a
he came from a lineage that very much had a
claim to the manual of leadership in Palestine and from
a very proud lineage that was and remains very respected
among the Palestinians across the sectarian divide, Christian and Mauslim.
In order to understand that relationship, though, it's important to
deal with the relations between the German Reich in the
Islamic World generally, and early on, the Third Reich viewed
the Islamic World not in reductionist terms, but as very
much a political force that had momentum in the historical process.
But that also was an important ally to the cultivated
in the war against Bullshevism and Jewry as they viewed it.
And this wasn't just pragmatic. There was a basic affinity
there with some qualifications, and this is important. And it's
impossible to talk about this with people in interrational manner
because they just go berserk if you mentioned Islam.
Speaker 2: They've been that brainwashed.
Speaker 3: Some of these people are just incredibly stupid, but you know,
the majority continues to take their cues from legacy media
and from regime ideologies. The only thing comparable to it
is people go utterly berserk if I attack the president.
I don't know what they think the president is doing
for them lately, or why they think he's in some
incredible personage. But you know, I'm not here to make
friends or to try and convert stupid people to make
them intelligent or reasonable.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the reasons I disdained social media
is because it's impossible they have serious conversations there because
aside from the paid agitators and disruptors, there's just this
whole peanut gallery of idiots. You think it's like a
video game or something, and they've decided, they've convinced themselves
they have some take on everything, and even though they
spend their days like exclusively in their own house or Walmart,
they decided they have some take on Islam where they
have no understanding of it whatsoever. So not just I mean,
don't get me wrong, I'm very blessed there's anybody who
spends time with capital t traditionalists authors, you know Mercia
Eliotti Renegan on particularly because I mean, obviously he was
a Sufi Maslim, Julius evil.
Speaker 2: They all rode extensive way.
Speaker 3: On a dar al Islam and Muhammad and his role
in the historical process and things like that, and obviously
I've got a fair amount of Mauslim comrades on the ground. Well,
she and Sunny, you know, we're both good friends and
reliable partisans. But who I can seek out to discuss
compared to theology within things. So I'm not suggesting I'm
isolating in that regard. It just it reaffirms why I
am a vanguardist, because most people aren't built for this
in all kinds of ways, and they don't even have
their own prejudices. Their prejudices are are Jewish prejudices, or
they're ones that you know they gleaned from from legacy
media apparatus, or or a fucking around on the Internet
with the people who are probably paid agitators, or like
random guys in India or something just saying things. It's
it's like it's staggering to re of ignorance. But anyway,
I'll stop ranting at the subs. The general disposition of
the Reich towards Islam, the Islamic world, like I said,
they viewed it as a global force that was playing
an essential role in the unfolding historical process. They also
predicted that although there wouldn't there wasn't going to be
the imminent orders of a new caliphate to replace the
Sea of Daryl Islam that obviously was vacated by the
collapse of the Ottomans. And to be clear that the
Kaiser Reich and the Ottoman Empire were very close allies.
So the Germans had a particularly the German academ which
had a very strong Orientalist bent, and the Foreign service,
many of whom remained.
Speaker 2: Into the Third Reich. They had a.
Speaker 3: Fairly highly developed understanding of Islam and of the several
cultures that constituted. And obviously, as the war went on,
the non European territories that were directly occupied by Wehrmacht
were largely Islamic countries, and Sarajevo, which is the seed
of European Islam, was occupied by by the Reich. So
that's that's important. All these all these variables intertwined. And
as I've written about in my manuscript, and I believe
I've discussed here with Pete previously, the massacres. They it's
the annihilation therapy that was perpetuated against minority elements in
the nascent Turkish state. The world came to know about
that owing to a maximum shooting a Richter who was
deployed there, and he alerted both the Red Cross and the.
Speaker 2: And and you know, the Berlin.
Speaker 3: Foreign Office, and he was told to know on certain terms,
to stop agitating for some sort of localized intervention or
relief for these people, because relations with Ankara are very important,
especially in these times of uncertainty. And I make the
point that well, you know, and on shooting the rictor
he fell at the at the Munich pouch in November
nineteen twenty three, and Hitler what on record is saying
that he was the one. He said the party never
recovered from the death of shooting a rictor.
Speaker 2: He was an essential.
Speaker 3: Personage to the National Socialist Party and the revolution. And
so I make the point in a manuscript. So if
if from inception the NSDAP was this hyper racialized, you know,
murderous conspiratorial cadre that simply hated all non Riian races,
why was Richter the only man who was raising alarm
about what was happening in an Asia Minor? Nobody seems
to be able to answer that question for me. They
simply ignore it, or sam lying, or move on without
addressing it.
Speaker 2: But be as it may.
Speaker 3: The Third Reich, although arguably there's the deepest sort of
diplomatic rapport and cultural rapport enjoyed with Daryl Islam, the
other major Access nations made similar efforts to curate and
mobilize Islamic support. Mussolini he famously, I mean, this was
very performative and very stage managed. But in nineteen thirty
seven he arranged for this ceremony where he was presented
with a quote sort of Islam at a public ceremony
in Tripoli, symbolically holding himself and the Kingdom of Italy
out as a as a as a protector of the
Maslim world against against communism, and he went on to
declare that the quote laws of the prophet would would
be honored. Gebels actually made a note of this, and
his diaries prolific as he was as a diary, it
was one of the reasons there's such a valuable artifact.
He had kind of a cynical take on this. He said,
you know, the duche never never passes up an opportunity
to glorify himself as the protector of other people's you know,
which was which was true? And I don't I don't
think Duce had some deep affinity for his lom Or
spent much time learning about its theological precepts. But it
was imperative, particularly considering the primary battle space that Italy
was committed to with that juncture, to try and curate
the support these people, or at least mitigate any hostility
that might be emergent otherwise. Similarly, the the Shintoist Japan,
they established the Greater Japan Islamic League and simultaneously the
Tokyo Mosque was established at nineteen thirty eight, and.
Speaker 2: They very much.
Speaker 3: Dedicated a lot of effort and resources, both military and
capital to encouraging in Islamic uprising against the Dutch, you know,
and radicalizing people in the in the Dutch Indies against them,
both the British and and the Midlanders. And like I
said this in the case of the right, this long
predated the national socialist revolution.
Speaker 2: The central powers, you know, particularly the Kaiser right.
Speaker 3: The Ottoman Empire was an essential ally theirs, and until
they got knocked out of the war, they played an
essential role in allowing Germany to sustain a two front conflict.
There's so much emphasis on the Western Front and the
Maelstrom and slaughter that that represented. There's not enough inc
dedicated to the US Front of World War One, where
it wasn't the stalemate that it came to pass in
the West because the open Step precluded it and facilitated maneuver.
Poison gas was used to greater effect in in the
East as well. And obviously you know until the when
when when the after the Rustian Revolution, the the Reichs
fail was victorious. I mean, that was one of the
big soar points of the of the military in the
wake of Versailles, is they were forced to give up
these territories that they won on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: But you know, before.
Speaker 3: An entire army deployed to the east was freed up,
you know, by the Red Revolution and the Treaty of
Breast the Tusk. The Ottomans were playing an essential role
in the Kaiser re jew strategic flank. And Wilhelm, who
was not any kind of great diplomat or strategic thinker,
he went out of his way to sustain good offices
with the Ottomans. You know, whole Vegg was very much
the political mind behind the kaiser Reich, but the Kaiser himself,
particularly in dealing with you know, fellow monarchs, and uh,
make the mistake, you know, the even in its waiting days,
an Ottoman sultan, that great authority, it was essential for.
Speaker 2: It. Dictates and.
Speaker 3: Declarations and as well as insinuations both subtle and flagrant,
come from the Kaiser himself. But you know, so German
Atoman authorities, they collaborated and trying to cultivate Pan Islamic
consciousness in North Africa and the Near East and Russia
and India. I mean, this was this was a long
standing effort. It's not just a question that emerged in
nineteen thirty nine and in in World War Two as
the himnachsaf ss. Even early on, as they found themselves
deployed to Islamic lands, German authorities were explicit that Islam
was of political importance and sold out and were instructed
to respect religious customs and show respect for Islam when
dealing with Moslems, and and to treat them as friendlies
unless they you know, he exhibited disrespect for the Reich.
It's it's heraldry or or for you know, the the
personal honor a soldiers and officers.
Speaker 2: On the ust front.
Speaker 3: The uh, the Reich one as far as they were,
the re establishment of mosques and madrasses, and they set
aside pious endowments for the re establishment of Islamic religious life.
Speaker 2: I mean they did.
Speaker 3: They did the same thing with with Orthodox churches. But
I mean that goes up saying if you know the
history of the conflict and the political side of things,
but uh, you know, they this went a long way
to undermining the Soviet rule because Moslims were targeted with
as much hostility as as the Orthodox were, you know,
and Gurbles themselves made the point that the early Soviet
cadres in KVD and the Czech They they hated the
Moslems rethno sectarian reasons as much as they did the Christians,
and viewed them as their repressors and did incredibly brutal
things and tried to tried to tried to extricate relateous
sensibility from Islamic communities Vermunt authorities. Also, they're very much cultivated,
you know, the Ulama in Eastern territories and the Balkans especially,
That's how headway was made. And as Uh the Balkan
theater became this counterinsurgency quagmire that became very important. And
Ante Pavolch Poglovnik of the Independent State of Croatia, he
was raised in a town early in his life that
had a very large Maslim population. And Uh Pavolos himself,
he knew a lot about Islam and their rituals. There's
a photographs of him wearing a fez when he's meeting
with Bosniaks. It's very interesting and he he famously he
viewed Bosniaks as quote racial Croatians and Sunni Islam. Uh
was viewed as a state relied religion alongside Roman Catholicism,
albeit secondary secondarily to it. But that that that that
that sort of expedited this these efforts in the Balden Theater,
which would have been a lot more difficult if the
used to show was openly hostile to UH Bosnia populations
and UH the UH the vermackd and UH the buff
and SS they they granted a lot of religious freedom
to Moslim recruits and UH Moslim formations. The religious calendar
was taken into uh account dietary laws with respect to
you know, the mess hall and things. Both of Vermacht
and of off On SSS had emms service chaplains, and
they launched h ideological education programs to explicate how you know,
a Moslim should live as a national socialist, you know,
and what the meaning was of national socialism to non
Germanic yet Allied races. This was very, very detailed, whatever
if any whether anybody agrees with this or not, you know.
And these education programs were almost unfailingly delivered by by
military emams. The only times they weren't is when an
imam wasn't available, and Bosniak imams in particular played an
outsized role. Again, Sarah Jevo only about two million Moslims
lived in Sarajevo, but that's the European seed of Islam,
and UH.
Speaker 2: The way Moslims viewed it throughout the.
Speaker 3: Moslim diaspora was, you know, being being sort of the
seed of Islamic culture in Europe and also being very
directly threatened by by Communism. There was a peculiar interest
in the fortunes of the Bosniaks of Sarajevo and reciprocally
pious Sunnis, you know, pious UH, the Bosniak Sunnis. They
they had a strong interest in the fortunes of their
coreligion is you know, behind the they were still behind
the verbial wire in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: And in UH in Palestine. You know, the.
Speaker 3: UH military formal military policy towards Islamic peoples, and UH
brought strategic terms.
Speaker 2: Really that.
Speaker 3: Policy paradigm first originated on July twenty fifth, nineteen forty,
just after the fall of France, you know, and as
the Battle of Britain was getting underway, a man named
Max van Oppenheim. He was a retired diplomat and an
Orientalist scholar. He spontaneously sent a memorandum, a seven page
memorandum to the Foreign Office suggesting that it was both
imperative to cultivate the populations and the enemies Islamic territories
and do everything possible to incite a rebellion against the
British authorities there, and moving forward to give whatever military material,
aid and diplomatic encouragement as was reasonable and feasible, you know,
And he said if he said, the time is nigh
for a comprehensive strategy to mobilize the Islamic world against
the British Empire. But he said, also if the British
have time to consolidate forces and suppress a nascent rebellion,
and well meanwhile holding you know, German forces at bay
in theater, the opportunity will not repeat. He's also Oppenheim
who'd spent most of his adult life traveling, and he
is traveling and living in the Islamic world. He'd reached
out directly as a private person since his retirement. He
was in his early eighties. I believe to pan Islamic
religious figures like Shakib Arslan and more most significantly to
the Grand Mufti aminel Hussini, and they became very close
and largely at Oppenneim's be hast. Hitler, who had a
somewhat tempestuous relationship with the Foreign Office, he took this
seriously and German officers were deployed to the entire Moslim
corridor where there was a British imperial presence from Egypt
to India. And of course subsequently the Grand moved Yea
Lucenia was able to gain a personal audience of the Hitler,
and we'll get to that, but this was the this
was the origin of what became a a strategic imperative
in political and military terms. I mean, that's important for
its own sake, but also the Ribbontrop's other cast is
some sort of fool or an incompetant, or the foreign
officers cast is in the same sort of terms as
the app there as this sort of a positive a
fifth columnists. And Hitler's cast is this provincial nationalist who
didn't understand the felt politique. I mean, all that is ridiculous.
And this the relationship of the Reich to the Islamic
world in particulars stands in a rebuttal to that inference.
And so this is an important subject matter for that reason.
And Oppenheim he he'd served in the kaiser Reich for
decades and there's few people then living who knew as
much about Islam and Islamic societies as he did, and
more than any one man, he was responsible for shaping
the Kaiser's disposition towards Islam generally. He was trained as
a lawyer. By education, he'd become fluent in several Middle
Eastern languages, including you know, various Arab dialects, as well
as Turkish. He traveled for years through Africa and the
Middle East, and in eighteen ninety six when he was
officially recruited by the Foreign Office, he subsequently posted for
twelve years in Cairo, where he directly monitored political developments
and cultivated and enduring relationships with Arab in Islamic leadership.
In Sudan during the Mahdi rebellion, he'd been on the
ground there and what he attested to in subsequent years
was that's when he first encountered is Lam as a
political force. He always understood the deeply integral structure of
Islam and conceptual terms, but this had all been at
stress act or academic until this point. In Sudan, he
came to realize that Islam had a strong role to
play in the Burgening political process, that.
Speaker 2: It had an.
Speaker 3: Ability to animate pious elements towards direct military action, and
therein it was a force multiplier, And that there is
a peculiar interplay of deep theology and political and military
imperatives in the Islamic world, and the Western power that
could integrate that into its own political soldiery would carry
the day in theater, and he he'd been able to
gain Oppenheim, had he'd been able to gain audiences with
the Ottoman Sultan, with a number of other luminaries, both
reactionaries and reformers. What they were hold in common was
a belief and advocacy of the pan Islamic cause in
lieu of this sort of narrow ethno nationalism that was
still characteristic in the colonized world in substantial measure. And
Oppenheim's dispatches were delivered personally to the Kaiser, who basically
viewed them as gospel in terms of how to proceed
in the Near East and North Africa. And the Kaiser Wilhelm,
for all of his shortcomings, was for myriad and he
was in many respects. The Reich was unfortunately saddled with him,
he did delegate to experts. That the other reason Halvegg
subsequently had the sort of power he did. And on
matters relating to h veldt politique, the Kaiser tended to
defer to people he viewed as the experts.
Speaker 2: And that's very Prussian.
Speaker 3: And that's why, despite Germany not having a global profile
in terms of directly colonies in the way that the
United Kingdom or France, or the Spanish or the Portuguese did,
they tend to do do very well at at cultivating
allies in the developing world. And this went uh. Some
of this was and we'll get into this in our
Thirty Years War series. Isn't a side I want to
cover this one I'm about to discuss as well as
the sort of proxy war that was going on in
Japan during the Thirty Years War between the Catholics and
specifically Dutch Reformed elements. But the the Ottomans had granted
asylum to Protestants, both Lutheran and Reformed, who were either
refugees of hostilities in the thirties War or were wanted
by the Inquisition, and a sort of cultural rapport developed
between Protestant Germany and Sunni Islam, and I think that
that's something that's understated and a lot of these otherwise
very complete accounts of the subject matter, but even limited
as the Kaiser ex colonial profile was, the Kaiser right
did in the colonies that did have rule over did
rule over Islamic populations in Togo and Cameroon, in Germany,
East Africa now and maybe a you know, and obviously
it was far easier. I mean, I mean, Africans are
subterre and Africans are are just challenges to managing those
populations just because of profound alienage. It's it's obviously, but
the colonial authorities obviously found it easier to deal with
Islamic elements than pagan ones who ascribed to some sort
of folk animism or something, and from the outset curated
good offices with Islamic elements in these territories, and local
Islamic structures weren't disturbed so long as Muslim leaders accepted
the colonial presence. In German Africa, sharia kor it's recognized
Islamic endowments were we weren't touched or text madrasas were
left open, religious holidays were acknowledged, and the Germans, uh wisely,
they ruled through Maslim intermediaries and Islamic dignitaries. You weren't
generally going to be visited in your township by some
by by by a white man or a German colonial administrator,
and it'd be an African Maslim intermediary.
Speaker 2: Or a.
Speaker 3: Respected man in in in the local mosque who you
deal with, and he in turn to deal with the Germans.
And on the one hand this left colonial governor somewhat isolated.
But on the other hand, it also meant that these
intermediaries they had the might of you know, the Kaiser
right behind them an event of an uprising, So indirect
rule was highly effective, and that it's not discussed enough that, again,
in comparative terms limited as the German colonial profile and
experience was, it very much was a school of political rule,
you know, and a high political intrigue, and they were
very good at it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's.
Speaker 3: I think I think that's not often enough acknowledged, other
than in very perfunctory terms. And this also led to
as these kinds of colonial as more and more business
was done in the colonies and as a geostrategic imperative
developed around the German presence therapy. There was more and
more of these sort of colonial congresses formal and informal
between military and political and business authorities.
Speaker 2: Within the Kaiser Reich.
Speaker 3: This led to the development of a a cadre of
experts in Islamic studies in German academ and there was
always a streak of Orientalism in modern German academ anyway,
but these guys who previously really only were focused on
classical Islam and you know, the their relations with the
Greeks and things, they shifted their conceptual focus very much,
I think the contemporary Moslim world and what a proper
imperial policy should be towards Islam qua Islam, and there
really wasn't something comparable in the UK or France. There
was philology type stuff, and you know, obviously a very
advanced cultural anthropology, but a kind of political science of
how European Christiandom should index with Islam and power political
capacities that was pretty much exclusive to the Reich. There
was a German Colonial Institute formally established. One of their
big luminaries was a guy named Karl Heinrich Becker, and
a couple of his colleagues Martin Hartman and D. D.
Speaker 2: Vestermann.
Speaker 3: Becker was was centered in Hamburg, Hartman and Vestman in Berlin.
They placed themselves in their faculty at the full disposal
of the German Empire, and the entirety of their labors
and their endowment was put in the service of investigating
and studying Islam, and the colony is accumulating knowledge on
its spread, historical, contemporary, its impact on power political affairs.
There was these massive surveys undertaken by Becker, Hartman Investorman
in ninety six, ninety eleven, in ninety thirteen respectively, which
were then submitted to the Kaiser, through the Colonial Institute,
to the Foreign Office onward to the Kaiser, and this
became a you know, viewed as power political dogma in
terms of how to proceed in in policy terms, both
formally and you know, the Low Board, the German Society
for the Study of Islam, it published a periodical Defelt
the Islams the World of Islam, and that became regarded
as the seminal European academic journal on on contemporary Islamic
faith and practice and politics. And you know, most people too,
even in the UK, which opposedly is full of these
you know, progressives and people who have a saying progressives
and know what they're talking aboutbviously don't, but it'sacter ized
supposedly by this this sort of progressive sensibility an academ
And then on the other hand, these sort of machiavellian
types of a deep understanding of alien cultures.
Speaker 2: And how to establish and maintain power.
Speaker 3: They're in most of the most of these German experts,
their counterparts, they they just looked at, uh, you know,
indigenous religions, whether they actually were savage, you know, forms
of animism or paganism, and is Lam is just so
much you know, so much nonsense or something you know, primitive.
It was, Uh, it was these German philologists and cultural
studies types and orientalists who you know, emphasize with the
Kaiser and demonstrated within and without of their own cutsure
to academ You know, look, this is Islam is a
a formative civilizing element. The uh higher races within Daryl Islam,
if you'll allow the descriptor.
Speaker 2: Produce extraordinarily high culture.
Speaker 3: And Islam is brought millions by millions of people out
of ignorance and savagery and even if one doesn't accept
that it's a singular power, political force that is playing
an essential role in the political process underway in the
then nast in twentieth century. And to be clear, you know,
this is when Christianity was under full assault by the Communists, and.
Speaker 2: It was uh.
Speaker 3: When this, however, can try to me have been this
enforced secularism reigned throughout the Western world. That's one of
the things that set the stage for the Bolshevik Revolution.
Speaker 2: You know, So.
Speaker 3: Islam is this catalyzing element really stood alone among world religions.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I there.
Speaker 2: Was, there was.
Speaker 3: Pious Christians who are quite literally waging a holy war
against the Communists. And I yes, I believe in in
symbolic psychological terms and anthropological terms that all politics is
essentially theological. But I'm talking in terms of conscious religious
practice and the ability of religious imperatives to anime political affairs.
In the early twentieth century, Islam really stood alone in
that capacity at global scale.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: For clarity, and that this was not lost obviously on these.
Speaker 2: These people that were talking.
Speaker 3: About probably the best known political theorists who devised a
practice of imperial rule visa the Islam was Karl Heinrich Becker.
He emphasized again and again he said Islam wasn't, as
the British claim, a threat to colonial government. He said,
not only is it not a threat, but that it
should and can be used to bolster imperial rule and
to guarantee peace stability in public order. He said that
the main reason why the white Western powers were coming
into hostile contact with Islamic cultures was because they were
either treating Moslim populations like they were animatester pagan savages,
or they were viewing observance of Islamic practice as somehow
inherently subversive, you know, And that integral aspect of Islam
not only did it render it an essential, essentially political
confession in a way that other face or not, but
it also meant that to attack any aspect of its observance.
Speaker 2: Was to.
Speaker 3: Attack every aspect of the reigning way of life in theater.
And this wasn't a minority opinion among the German colonial authorities,
both political, diplomatic and military. German colonial officers didn't have
a hostile disposition towards Islam.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: They correctly viewed the anti imperialist elements and the pro
communist elements in theater that claimed to be Pan Islamic.
They weren't really because the two. It was an irreconcilable Veltisham.
There was superficially Islamist language in Moscow's propaganda as well
as within some of these anti colonial ideological subcultures, but
there was no depth to it. Johann von Leers, and
we'll get into him next episode.
Speaker 2: He's a.
Speaker 3: Lesser known personage within the Third Reich, and it was
an essential personator to the to the to the national
Insulti's resistance of the day of defeat. I hold him
in great esteem. But he correctly recognized Islam's not reactionary.
In fact, it tends towards a revolutionary paradigm, but it
is socially conservative in in terms of its view of authority.
Speaker 2: And a assaultant.
Speaker 3: Or a king, or a colonial governor or a procurator
or or an occupying in general, even if he himself
is not of the faith and not of your people,
if he protects Islam from its enemies and allows the
free observance of Islam, you were obligated as a good
Moslem to not revolt against him. For example, Wilhelm went
as far as he in the autumn eighteen ninety eight,
he the Kaiser went on a tour of the German
colonies and of the Holy Land and the Middle East generally,
and he visited Damascus specifically to visit the tomb of Salhadeen,
and he gave a speech to all these you know,
assembled masses of people where he declared himself to be
a friend of his lab and the German Empire, to
be a friend of Islam and of quote the world's
three hundred million Mohammedians, you know, to give you an
idea of the priority that Berlin put on the cultivation
of this relationship.
Speaker 2: It wasn't.
Speaker 3: Just a minor consideration emergent in the Foreign Office or
or something that Colonial Office officers posted in theater. You know,
we're we're we're trying to force the Kaiser and the
government to take notice of you know, and uh, this
paid uh this, this, this paid dividends. I mean not
you know again, not only uh did it maintain good
offices with the Ottomans, who were in real trouble then,
but who were an essentral ally you know, within the
boundar rationality of the power political paradigm that you know,
reached critical Zenas in ninety fourteen. But there there was
an enduring affinity between the Reich, the German people, and
Dar Al Islam that endured to the Cold War. In
my opinion, you know, it was h this is a
bit of a tangent, but you know, the only the
only Marxist Leninist Arab state was South Yemen, and it
was a cadre of East Germans who really were the
intermediary between the Warsaw Pact, the East Bloc and and
and the uh, the indigenous Arabs there that uh the
book uh John Kuhler is this uh cold war State
department guy. He wrote a really interesting book on the Stazi.
I mean, he's very much a a pro regime kind
of guy, cold warrior type, but he and I believe
he was probably like a lot of State Department people.
I think he was probably an intelligence guy under diplomatic cover.
Speaker 2: But he, uh, he wrote.
Speaker 3: About the the Stazi, the National Folks Armies presence in Yemen.
You know, he tried to cast as Pejoritaly as possible,
you know, suggesting that you know, all these these these
Germans swearing around like colonial overlord. It's like, well, ay,
they're doing something right that the yemen the Yemenis didn't
didn't open fire on him instead of packing. I mean,
I and the Yemen's aren't exactly the people who who
take a knee for others, just because you know, if anything,
there as uh impossible to govern as the past tunes
and they it was it was the DDR that really
sold him on the idea of a Stalinism. I mean,
there's South South Yemen. There there's a confusing pastiche of
of of of political intrigues in Yemen. But I mean, obviously,
and I'm not suggesting that the soul or even the
primary approximate cause of them aligned with the East Block
was East German persuasiveness or intrigues. But interestingly they're one
of the one of the Yemeny militias today in the
south of the country. They ride under the flag of
South Yemen, you know, uh and they claim uh at
a Drake lineage to that.
Speaker 2: Polity, you know. So it's that there's something there, but yeah,
that I think that should be adequate foundation. Man, there's
still there's a couple other.
Speaker 3: Authors I want to get into relating to the Orientalists
academic culture and in the Kaiser Reik and then later
the Third Reich and the impact that had on.
Speaker 2: Conceptual matters.
Speaker 3: But I want to get into the Grand Moftiel Hussini
and Palestine and it's status as an access element and things,
and then I promise after that we'll get back to
the Thirty Years War. But this is important then, it's
it's particularly timely in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you think you're gonna be able to talk
about the ground Moftie and Ben von Leers in one
episode or is this possibly going to be three?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: They might go three, but I'll see what I can do.
I'll try and expedite it.
Speaker 1: Well, don't yeah, don't leave anything out just to uh,
you know, we can do three episodes. That'll be perfectly fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Of course, always head on over at Thomas A Substack
real Thomas seven to seven seven dot substack dot com
and his website is Thomas tom seven to seven seven
dot com. The t is a seven and you can
connect to everything from either one of those places. And
if you want to try and find him on X
where where you know, his account could be gone one
day and back the next constantly.
Speaker 3: I mean X is an ex as a total pile
of ship like it, like it really is. I I
I'm not trying to play murder, but I only maintain
an account there because people for some reason can't move
on from it. And it's it's kind of the one
stuff place, the index of people and stuff.
Speaker 1: As a kid say, as a kid say, or used
to say this, this phrase is probably uh played out
by now. It's really fake and gay.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's garbage. It's garbage, and yeah it's fake and
gay as well.
Speaker 1: All right, Thomas taching a couple of days.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peakingiana Show.
Thomas is back for part two, talking about the relationship
between Islam and not only the Third Reich, but you
know you talked about the Kaiser years in the first part,
so jump right in.
Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And subsequently, I at least want to dedicate a brief
addendum to discussing the post war resistance in exile and
how that dovetailed with the cause of Palestinian liberation and
Pan Islamic consciousness. Generally, I think we got into some
of that when we were talking about the post war
diasp of National Socialists in exile. We were talking about
how der Veg with Johann von Weir's as well as
Otto Rimer and Hans Rudel, was a major contributor to
both in terms of his work product and capital investment.
And when Argentina was no longer a friendly environment for
that sort of partisan activity owing to Perone being forced
out of office, Von Leers made his way to the
Court of Nasser, and Egypt and Syria in particular were
very much the loci of that kind of partisan activity,
and that's significant because that plays into.
Speaker 2: The not just.
Speaker 3: The military culture of the region on the Arab side,
many of whom were trained by for or National Socialists
and Behrmax veterans, but also it impacted the culture of
resistance in profound ways, and that's something that's overlooked. And
we talked a bit about the odd dialectics of the
DDR and the Rote Army fraction and Horse de Mahler. Obviously,
the element he was representing when he was on the
ground in the levant was there of the DDR and
the Rote Army fraction, but he did a lot to
facilitate deep contact and operational interdependence with the Popular Front
for the Liberation at Palestine and the PLO and things,
and this all ties together, not just conceptually, but in
terms of a common nucleus of operative fact.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense. I let me see. I try.
Speaker 3: I always try to indicate in my outlines where I
leave off. So if I'm repeating myself, please let me
know I speaking of I raised mind lyrics. If memory serves,
we left off talking about vvon Lears and some of
his work early on and after the National Socialist Revolution,
as early as ninety thirty four to thirty five, he
was attempting to create good offices with you know, European
Moslims in the Balkans as well as with the elements
in Palestine and behind the the verbial wire in the
Soviet Union, and von Lears very much had the ear
of the Gebels as time went on. Gebels actually, through
the Propaganda Ministry, he instructed the press to paint a
positive image of Islam, or at least not a negative one.
This long preceded the war, and he urged journalists under
the number of the Propaganda Ministry to give credit to
the Islamic world as a cultural factor that plays a
historically significant role in the historical process, and that alliance
between the national socialist cause and Pan Islamism and the
liberation of the Holy Land is you know, completely commensurate
with and a component of a national socialist of health politique,
you know. And this is important for a few reasons.
It says light not just on the deep ideological culture
and philosophical disposition of national socialism its standard bears, but
also it's yet another rebuttal of the claim that the
Third Reich was this provincial state that didn't understand the
cultural and strategic situation outside of immediate battle theaters. And
that's preposterous for a lot of reasons, many of which
are obvious. Germany was a very cosmopolitan country, not in
the modern pejorative sense, I mean in the the nineteenth
and early twentieth century European sense. Van Leers, of course,
to he was a linguist. He was fluent in something
like thirteen different dialects. He was a cultural anthropologist, I
mean what we consider a cultural anthropologist.
Speaker 2: He was a philologist. He was an expert on.
Speaker 3: Islam and Oriental societies, and he was very much a
right Hegelian and he wrote an essay, probably his most
famous essay, and it's fairly accessible online. I don't know
if you can find a translation that's not corrupted by
Ai slap, but.
Speaker 2: It was titled.
Speaker 3: Judaism and Islam is Opposites, and in Hegelian terms, Von
Leers viewed Islam as the dialectical antithesis and Judaism and
a splendid repudiation of it.
Speaker 2: And he said.
Speaker 3: That that's one of the reasons why the Caliphate wasn't
subverted by a hostile Jewish element within, because these were
calcit truant people were locked behind ghetto walls, and every
aspect of the Islamic cultural, social, and legal code precluded
them mobilizing in a possile capacity to wage war from
within by subject huge or any other way. And whether
anybody accepts that perspective or not, or think that it
is merit within the Hegelian paradigm or without, it's a fascinating.
Speaker 2: Theory.
Speaker 3: And I highly recommend any of von Lear's essays that
you can run down. I mean, admittedly have got a
discrete interest in the subject matter, and it's relevant to
my own research, but I aside from that, I believe
it's essentially having a complete understanding and conceptual terms of
the Third Reich and the national socialist ideological culture. And
von Leers wasn't alone in his overall perspectives. Ferdinand Klaus
he was a well regarded racial theorist, and he was
an associate of Hans Gunther Hans of Kate Gunther, who
was another well known racialist. Both these guys in a
profile comparable to Houston, Stewart Chamberlain or Authrop Startard. For comparison,
Klaus's book Ross until Ross und Seal, Race and Soul
was for all practical purpose is a best seller if
memory serves, and for different reasons the Dad that he
cited because again he Klaus and going through both had
very much of a materialist view of race. But they
were in substantial agreement with Julius Evil and Renee gain
On and suggesting a basic eff between the master cast
stratum of the Nordic race and that of you know,
the Caliphate. In other words, Islam was emergent and curated
by the natural racial overcast within Daryl Islam, and that's
one of the reasons it's so splendidly tailored to this
integral concept of sovereignty where every man is in his
place and the cast system remains undisturbed because it it
emerges from the natural hierarchy within, you know, the oriental
paradigm from where it was emergent. Klaus wrote reports for
the SS head Office on political affairs and strategic matters
relating the anthropological considerations, and he wrote, he wrote a
paper that was submitted titled Preparation of an Operation for
winning over the Islamic Peoples, you know, and within it
he reflected on and the good offices between the kaiser
Reich and the Ottoman Empire. He talked about the warrior
heritage of many of the STEP people who were you know,
very very much culturally Muslim, and he said it's important
to emphasize similarities and feltenscham between national socialists doctor and
ethics and the Quran, you know, and that's very interesting.
And to be clear, Klaus wasn't suggesting that national socialism
was intended as some sort of aristots religion. I know
that that's something a lot of anti fascists like to claim.
And Bandy, he was acknowledging that the Islamic faith structure
is very, very different than religion in the occident. It's
the integral aspects of it that are significance, because Islam
is a political doctrine and an ethical disposition as well
as the theological system, and that's what's key. And if
you're a Hegelian, which essentially every everybody associated with the
Third Reich was to some degree or another, you view
the development of religiosity as being very much bound up
with the dialectical process within the relevant culture and the
variables that the historical variables that created Islam were very
congress with those that gave rise to national socialism, particularly
the perennial existential ross and Kreeg against the Jew. So
it's not really a stretch, you know. And again you've
you've got to understand the conceptual parameters of the time
and place that these ideas are being postulated.
Speaker 2: There was a unique.
Speaker 3: Receptivity actual potential, you know, and a lot of people
who otherwise know the subject matter are overly dismissive of
of that. Interestingly, Klaus, after the war he abandoned the
biological racialism. He remained an orientalist academic, and he ultimately
converted to Islam.
Speaker 2: That was the case with.
Speaker 3: Carl Wolff, the SS adjutants to the permanent SS adjutant
to the Fear. Later he he commanded troops the field
and he was highly decorated. He wasn't just a parade
ground soldier. But he's a fascinating guy. In David Irving's
True Himmler, which is a great book, I understand some
people's lament that you can tell that it was intended
to be two volumes, and Irv you know the infirmity
of old age that strikes us all down, struck Irving
before you complete it. But what there is of it
is just fantastic. But anyway, Carl Wolf's testimony is cited extensively. Anyway,
Carlo Wolf's daughter, Fatima Grimm, she married that check Bosniak
Moslem guy, and she converted to Islam and she became
an islam At theologian, and then she wrote extensively on
jihad is a concept. And I realized Klaus and Fatima
Griham and people like I'm at Hubert, who's it was
a fascinating personage. I believe Hubert would have been indicted
after nine to eleven had he not died, but that's
a subject or a discussion for another day. I realized
these people are outliers. I'm not suggesting that it's normative
or some sort of natural progression within German cultural dialectics
to convert to Islam. I've got too much respect for Islam.
But I could never imagine converting to Islam. With the
exception of somebody like Renet Ginon who truly went native.
I mean that, you know, living among Moslims and living
in the Orient for essentially his whole life.
Speaker 2: That's a different phenomenon.
Speaker 3: However, with those qualifiers, I there is some sort of
internal logic, especially considered the catastrophe of the day of
defeat and the subsequent occupation. There is some sort of
internal logic to the peculiar spiritual journey of von Leers,
of Fatima, Graham of Klaus. I believe, but I'm sure
the buddle of that is that that's speculation.
Speaker 2: The UH and there was others too.
Speaker 3: There was other academic writers Schmidtz, Lindmann Reichhardt who posited
not just an alliance at geo strategic convenience, but an
ideological affinity for between Islam and the national social state
on Hegelian grounds. Linderman went as far as to say
that and some of the propaganda that he drafted intended
for Islamic societies. He said, the fuer prinsip is the
occidental variant of, you know, the same the principle that
animates the caliphate, you know. And Raichar knew the Kuran
very well, so he was able to cite passages that
conveyed the notion that Muhammad was the fear of the believers,
and subsequently the caliph represented that.
Speaker 2: Role, you know. And but he made it clear that
the fear is comparable to the Madhi.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He's not suggesting the fear as a prophet. You know.
Speaker 3: It was very intelligently tailored before its purpose, you know.
And of course Moslims were under tremendous pressure by the
by the communists, you know, they were they were targeted
as some early as as Orthodox Christians were, you know.
Speaker 2: In that also provided an.
Speaker 3: Avenue of ingress for this kind of discoursive affinity. And
after as early as nineteen thirty six, the major transmitter
of German propaganda to the Mediterranean and North Africa and
the Middle East was in Zessen. Go to the small
town south of Berlin, and it housed at the time
one of the most powerful shortwave transmitters in the world.
It had been built for the transmit for the ninety
thirty six Olympics and after nineteenth. As of nineteen thirty
nine the broadcast station ISS Zessen it brought it had
an Arabic broadcast every day, you know, intended for Turk's,
Iranians Maslims who were then within uh the British Raj.
There was a journalist, Gustav Buffinger, who headed up what
was called the orient Office.
Speaker 2: Of the radio station. They had.
Speaker 3: They had seventy or eighty permanent staff members a type
as translators, announcers, and as the war went on, it
broadcasts in standard Arabic, but in berber and in some
of these.
Speaker 2: Could Cassius languages too.
Speaker 3: There was an Egyptian emigray named a Eunice Bari who
was a big national socialist and he was a permanent
fixture at the Zessen radio station. He's he's a shadowy guy.
He disappeared at some point and it's pretty it's pretty
clear if he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Murdered.
Speaker 3: He disappeared into the into the Middle East, and and
and probably took it a new identity and ended up
similarly in the court of Nasser or or in Syria.
But you know this in the Zessen uh the Oriental
broadcast from Zessen, they continued until just a month before
the day of defeat, you know, in April ninety forty five.
So it was it was a major thing. We've got
to get into the life and times in Muhammad Amino
Husseini for this to be anything approaching complete discussions. So
forgive me for changing gears to you know, like a
biographical discussion. You know, of course Hussein he was the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and he's a man who's very
much light about and which comes with no surprise. Not
only was he a Palestinian and a significant man in
Sunni Islam, but you know, he also was allied to
the Axis cause. So that's sort of a sort of
a perfect storm carearacteristics that you know, make on a
target for Slanders of the most hostile sort. He was
pretty pretty much indisputably the most powerful leader of the
Palestinian national movement during British rule over you know what,
before it had been an Ottoman fief them for those
that don't know it, from night approximately nineteen seventeen until
ninety forty eight, that was the period of British rule over.
Speaker 2: Palestine, and.
Speaker 3: The mouftie was he reminds me very much a Sayid
Kuta in his disposition. You know, people suggest he talked
about both sides of his mouth and the issue of
violent partisan activity. You've got to understand the role of
the mufti, like a mofie is a learned man in
Islamic jurisprudence, and soon he's put a premium on interpretation
and application of the law.
Speaker 2: So a mouftie.
Speaker 3: He's not a governor as we think of it, and
he's not a priest either. He's he's one part sort
of a learned wise man within the tribe and one
part intermediary between the congregation of the faithful and the
outsider or secular authority.
Speaker 2: You know, and a lot of both Zionists and a.
Speaker 3: Lot of court historians, either out of ignorance or because
they're how telling the the prejudice of the former, they claim, Oh,
the the British invented the office of the Grand Mufti
to have some sort of figurehead on the ground, you know,
to to mitigate the difficulties of directly ruling over a
Maslim population. That's not true, that's ridiculous. They British recognized
him as the Grand Moutie of Jerusalem and seeded authority
over Islamic holy sites to him. But you're you're talking
about a role and a title and a function of
mufti that that spans a thousand years, okay. But to
bring it back to some of the similarities in him
and Kutev and another.
Speaker 2: Islamic juris types.
Speaker 3: You know, it's there's a complex interplay between how a
good Moslem relates to secular authority and how he manages
a situation, and is such as that that, you know,
the Palestinians were in vis a vis the occupation. They
knew that some sort of race war was coming and
that the Desionists wanted to ethnically cleanse them. They knew
that British would be leaving at some point, and they
knew that if a national state was going to be realized,
they would have to make that divorce from British rule amicable.
Speaker 2: You know. And finally.
Speaker 3: A moved he's not a general and he's not a
guerrilla fighter or a soldier, I mean his if he
if he's called it, laid on his life for Jahad.
That's what he must do, and he will do if
he's worthy of the of the title. But you know,
he's it's not his role to devise military solutions under
conditions of occupation or it's his job to keep the
people safe, you know, and to interpret the law is
laid down by the governing structure in a way that
allows from Islamic life to be realized, you know.
Speaker 2: And beyond that too that I'm not a Quran.
Speaker 3: Scholar, but so you know, I just want to get
that out there. But when our revolt is permissible under
the Quran, there's very discreete conditions for that, you know,
even in apostate occupier or or Kelly. If he protects
Islam and allows Moslims to freely worship, it's not it's
it's not just or righteous to overthrow him or to
disobey him, you know. And so there's that obviously, you know,
he's a he's a hate target of mainstream historians in
the Anglo sphere, but even a lot of Maslims. Some
people try and paint him as some sort of extremist
quasi national socialist. On the other hand, you you know,
you a lot of passionate people behind the Palestinian cause.
You know, they view him as some as some sort
of machiavellian intriguer, you know, who didn't do enough to
to protect Palestine. That's misguided in my opinion. You know,
he was as part as in as he as was
appropriate to the circumstances. And the fact that he the
fact that he got a personal audience that off Hitler
is pretty remarkable and the way that came about is
fascinating too, and I'll get into that.
Speaker 2: But you know, the.
Speaker 3: On the one hand, uh, Hitler was cunning in who
he would curate good offices with. But it's it wasn't
some foregone conclusion Hitler would meet whoever the Grand Moftia
Palestine was. Why would he? I mean, basically, the force
of personality and the post persuasiveness of his polemic and
his own sort of cunning and intriguing because he was
something of an intriguer that's not a slander, is what
brought him into a face to face meeting with the fear.
And that's pretty extraordinary. You know, whatever's flaws that have
to be acknowledged.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And it's also to the circumstances on the ground in Palestine.
I mean to say nothing in the warriors, but from
the conclusion, from the fall of the Ottoman Empire until
you know, the declaration of the design Is state and
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, there's an incredibly unstable and
not just fluid but atinkly chaotic situation on the ground
and the levant, you know, the the move. These views
changed in accordance with the security situation and the historical situation.
You know, there was basically at least two distinct phases,
you know, from nineteen seventeen when the British arrived, until
about nineteen thirty six, where he was, like say Kute,
a kind of cautious, pragmatic traditional leader in the mofty role,
you know, cooperating with British officials well uncompromisingly opposing Zionism.
Speaker 2: And then there was the exile phase.
Speaker 3: The moved. He was exiled after the Arab revolt, which
was catastrophic, not his exile, I mean the outcome of
the Arab revolt, but rightly or wrongly, he was swept
up in the reaction of the crown to the revolutionary
situation on the ground, and you know, he was identified
as a partisan actor, if not an architect of the rebellion.
But after he was understandably bitter being exiled from his home,
you know. And again the Hussini family has a powerful
and distinct heritage to this day. They remained important people
in theater. But he became he became increasingly radical, and
he gravitated ultimately to the axis, and he did become
a partisan.
Speaker 2: You know, he.
Speaker 3: Ultimately he became essentially got loab Burger's right hand man
and recruiting and mobilizing Masm populations to the vafinesss now
again too. You know, Hussein he had been he'd come
up through the Ottoman system. You know, those Sainy family,
they were the most prominent political Palestinian family who were
the direct intermediary for generations between the Palestinians and the
Ottoman overlords.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So I mean exiling him was it was no small thing.
And he wasn't He wasn't some upstart careerist or some
random emam you know, who insinuated himself into a clerical
and partisan role. Going to a nascent and then fully
realized crisis situation.
Speaker 2: You know. So that's.
Speaker 3: All these things are, all these things are important to consider.
What uh oh, I want to give me one second
just to find my citation here. I'm sorry, I wanted
to I wanted to get into how how the Grand moved.
He got an audience with Hitler. Another personage who was
essential to the development of the Third Reich's relationship with
the Grand Muftie but Islamic populations generally, was a German
officer named Veilhelm Hintersatz, also known as Harun al Rashid bay.
He was an SS standard and feure. He was born
in Brandenburg and during World War Two he commanded the
Eastern Moslem Division OS turkisher Waffenveband Division, which was this
sort of cosmopolitan pastiche of Kazakhs, Turkmen asiis.
Speaker 2: You name it but el Rashid. During the First World War.
Speaker 3: He served on the General staff of the Ottoman Empire
with Enver Pasha, who was one of the young Turks.
Speaker 2: For those in know the history, and during his time
there two things happened.
Speaker 3: He developed a strong admiration for Otto Lehman von Sanders,
who he met Sanders was this Prussian aristocrat who was
a non observant Jew who became this hero of the
Ottoman Empire after spending his life there and and and
and training their people and waging war when the Ottoman
Empire went to war in command the Turkish troops. L.
Rashid wrote a biography of Sanders later that got published
in Berlin in the thirties that got a lot of
fan fear. Anyway, during the war, during the Great War,
he converted to his lamb and then he as when
he became Haruin o rashid Bait. After his conversion, he
h he met up with as the Great War was ending,
there was a whole glut of POW's from the Russian
Empire at Wunsdorff Camp and he met he met a
bunch of Maslim POWs who had been drafted into the
Tsarist army, and they further schooled him in Islam, and
he developed an interest also in the Russian way of
war because looking forward it was clear that you know,
the Soviet Union was going to be the the prime
geostrategic actor, not just in Europe and not just contra Germany,
but you know, across his entire planet.
Speaker 2: Because he was.
Speaker 3: A an Aryan Maslim and an experienced combat officer, and
he was multi lingual, and he had the implicit trust
of other Moslems. He was recruited by Italian intelligence when
they went to war in Ethiopia, you know, so he
served il duce and further augmented his credentials and guys
who served under him, like Italians and Germans, you know,
who said it was uncanny that they said he quote
prayed without timidity in a mosque and quote he had
the implicit trust of the native Mohammedians who saw him
as a fellow believer.
Speaker 2: He also.
Speaker 3: Viewed the United Kingdom as potentially Germany's Achilles heel, and
he said, and this was even long before the ascendency
of the War Party, but he said that the British
Empire is gonna have to be neutralized because they're going
to make war on the Reich. And he said the
key instrumentality of the Reich prevailing in that conflict is
an alliance with with with with Moslims on you know,
currently under hostile occupation by by the United Kingdom. He uh.
During open Our when operations Barbara Rosa kicked off.
Speaker 2: Or she.
Speaker 3: He was a liaison officer with the Reich Main Security
Office and.
Speaker 2: The UH.
Speaker 3: Eastern populations, you know, the UH, the Moslim nations within
Maslim nationalities within the Soviet Union, and in that role
with the Right Security Main Office of the s S,
he made contact with the Grand Moufty hodj I mean
hodj I mean al Hussini and this became a a
close friendship between the two men, and it developed into
a deep alliance. And El Rashid and the Grand Mufti
they began drawing up a plan. They believed that there
there was two things happening here. This is one of
the quagmire and the Balkans was emerging in earnest you know,
which which was remained UH unmanageable for a substantial portion
of the war. So She and the Grand Mufti they
believe that the ideal place to deploy a Moslim division
would be in the Balkans, you know. And thus hand
Jar came about thirteenth SS. But additionally, Bosnia was the
Moslem heartland within Europe. And again, like we talked about
in the first episode, there's a prestige that attended that,
and plus the ecumenical clout of the Grand Moftie of Jerusalem,
who's a very respected man, going to Sarajevo and addressed
not just Bosniaks, but all Moslims and particularly those behind
the wire fighting communism. This uh, this, this, this was
very politically savy a relative of the King of Egypt,
King Farouk, a Prince Mansour dow El Rashid met him
through the Mufti, and Mansour then began aiding in these
recruitment efforts, and that that bolstered these propaganda efforts, and
uh the resulting formation. Ultimately Hanjar was the first, and
it was also Skanderberg, which was Albanian, Moslem and Kamma.
But the true Pan Islamic division sized element was uh
the Aus Turk Waffens Turkish Vafen SS Eastern Turkic SS cores.
And again it was a it was turk Man, it
was Kazakhs, it was a series.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: You know, all Uh, the nationalities of the Soviet Union
who were of the Mauslim faith were represented. I'm gonna
till we got okay it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Now, what's really interesting here is that, Yeah, the other
said of ty personage ins was got Lot Burger He
was a SS general as UH well as a higher
SS and police leader, and he was responsible for the
recruitment of non German nationalities into the and he was
impressed with what he saw from L. Rashid in the
Mufti and berger Uh decided that there had to be
an effort to insinuate chaplains with a an national socialist
ideological education into Islamic formations. So the position of military
imam was first introduced in ninety forty two. And this
again is that that Behastont got lobed Burger the command
headquarters of the SS Eastern Turkish Division. They set up
what amount to do an imam training school and it
oversaw religious practices and the four Mauslim legions as they
were designated.
Speaker 2: Find uh.
Speaker 3: A mola at division level and emms and clerics down
to platoon level. The overall UH legion mola was a
for the Isazabaijani legion for example, it was Iman Pasha IV.
The Turkestan legion. It was a molla you know you
to have, and so on down the line and legion
and division molas. They were the equivalent of company commander.
And these were fighting men. One of the most famous
of the emms. He was a Bosmik named Hallem Malich.
He held the Iron Cross and slew of other awards.
You know, so these these guys weren't just actors or
stand in propaganda elements. And it also this was a
level of religious formalized religious hierarchy and institutionalization, which basically
it was there's there's just there's something brilliant about it.
That's not how Maslim armies were organized. It was really
assimilating Islamic cultural coding into a Wehrmacht model, and a
lot of the recruits really took to that. There were
some Maslim legions that were terrible, and there were some
that were absolutely savage, but this almost ecclesiastical structure that
one would have found in the company in the Thirty
Years War, for example, you know, transposed to an Islamic
cultural paradigm. Like when it worked when the mentioned material
constituting the company, platoon or division in question, when it
was game fighters, and when it was mentioned material suitable
for soldiery, it was a it was it was a
fantastic formula. And it also it that's did wonders for
discipline and morale. It was just a question of spiritual council.
There was a way of conveying to these recruits that
you know, this is a this is a jihad against
Bolshevism and Jewry and being a good national socialist and
being a good Maslam or synonymous. And where those tendencies converge,
it's in the person of the Islamic national socialist political soldier,
exemplified by the imam you know, who was both a
cleric and a warrior, you know, and who you know
and and in and not just a commander in in
the path of Jahad that we are on, but you know,
also a spiritual guide. The uh Ralph von Hagendorff, who
was a career uh vermacht Off and an expert in
military jurisprudence. In May nineteen forty three he issued a
formal recommendation that in Moslem formations, before of course martial
as sigence punishment to a defendant, there's to be a
consultation with the divisional mulla on the scope and severity
of punishment to legitimize the military justice system. And this
was huge too. Hagendorff recalled also that he said often
these emams what they'd recommend was usually substantially more severe
than what the secular go to German military justice and
the vermach and Sys otherwise demanded. You know, so in practice,
these emails acted as intermediaries with a European and Christian
military justice system that nevertheless, you know, abided Islamic principles
and its punitive aspect. And this this insinuated legitimacy into
it that otherwise would be lacking. Around the same time
May ninety forty three, gottlab Burger he issued a formal
decree from the main office. It was on the quote
ideological spiritual education of them of the Maslim SS divisions,
and it formally identified emovs as the most important transmitters
of political and religious education within Moslim formations.
Speaker 2: It made clear that.
Speaker 3: The emphasis was to be on the common enemies of
Germans and Moslims, you know, Judaism, quote Anglo Americanism, communism, freemasonry, secularism,
you know, and that these shared ideals including militancy and
the marshal ethos, the role of morality, of tradition, of
upright manliness, and you know, like all this is what
brought together national socialists of of of different faiths, you know,
whether they be the Protestant, Catholic or Moslem. And you know,
again Burger, the more I dive into I was I
was researching his battle record and his career in the
ss ohing to like a different, a related but distinguishable
subject matter. And I he was just an amazing guy.
You really only find footnotes about him as oh he
was this big war criminal in this brute or he's described,
you know, kind of similar terms to Martin Borman. It's just, oh,
he was just a sort of creatiness function here, not
not at all.
Speaker 2: And for.
Speaker 3: A military man he he had. He had a lot
of deep esoteric interests. And I I think that Boa
has attracted those types frankly, you know, not not just
romantics and dreamers, but there was Orientalism was literally coded
into it, you know. I mean, that's why the Proud
and Book on Genghis Khan was required reading at SSH
Younger school. And of course Yaka and Piper wrote his
senior thesis on the Proud and Book and Genghis Khan.
But I mean, I think it's I Schopenhower was an Orientalist,
and I you know, Chopenhower, more than Nietzsche was the
patron philosopher of the of the German right I think.
But yeah, we're coming up on the hour man. I
I uh, I hope he are finding this educational and
interesting and we'll we'll wrap it up the next episode,
I promise.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Awesome, That's what I was gonna ask if we if
you have another episode in this and is is that
the up are you going to be getting into post war?
Speaker 2: I'd like to do war?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I mean, I mean it's your show literally,
like I mean, if you're a minimal of that of
the subs. The main thing is that you're happy and
the subs are finding this interesting, and then I promise
we'll get back to the thirty years War.
Speaker 1: No problem at all. Remind everybody go over to real
Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com. It's probably
the best way to connect to Thomas, and can go
to his website Thomas seven seven seven dot com, the
T and Thomas is a seven and basically you can
connect to him everywhere from there. From those places, it's
a firm Thank you, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Appreciate than Youddy.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekiniana Show.
Thomas is here and a little meeting series doing on
Islam and the Third Reich and Germany in general. We're
going to close that out today. So you know, what
we've heard from the subs is they're really enjoying this.
So thank you for the recommendation on this great subject.
I've learned a lot and you know, take it away.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That makes me very happy. And I appreciate
the subs and their kind words and feedback. That's essential.
This is an important subject matter for a lot of reasons.
I generally agree with Aarm's and lolty. Islamic dialectics are
very important to the post Cold War historical process in
conceptual terms. I don't think that needs to be said additionally,
and I'm including this as sort of an addendum to
my manuscript. That's one of the reasons I haven't submitted
it for formal editing to a publisher. Yet there's this myth,
some of which derives from the testimony of Albert Spear,
which I consider it to be not remotely credible. Obviously,
he described the final months of the German Reich as
Hitler developing this sort of nihilistic apathy punctuated by fits
of rage and an impulse to sort of burn everything down.
Hitler's actions don't indicate that. And I've emphasized I'm bringing
this back to the subject matter. I'm not on a
CENL tangent, I promise I emphasize the fact of don
and it's being designated as successor not just because Hitler
thought that he was a man the Allies would find
acceptable and they did. Other than the Yodel, he was
really the only number of defendant that people in the
United Kingdom, not just the Admiralty, but a lot of
the aristocracy and even people in the war cabinet came
to the defense of. But also there was an understanding
that the post war world would need some sort of
resistance legacy if Europe was going to survive, and if
the national socialist cause was going to survive, albeit in
a historically contingent configure. A And that's a subject for
a whole weet, a whole series on that, And like
I said, I'm dedicating the final third approximately of my
manuscript to the subject matter. One of the only authors
who I think truly understands that and who really understands
that there was a fascist international of a sort during
the Cold War and beyond is Kevin Coogan. He was
an unusual guy. He wrote a biography of Francis Yaki,
he called Dreamer of the Day Francis Perker Yaki in
the Post Were Fascist International. This was released in nineteen
ninety nine. It's actually a fantastic book. H Ke Thompson
contributed to it and allowed his testimony to be included.
Elsa Davitt, who was a longtime mistress of Francis Yaki.
She participated in and proffered a lot of her testimony
as well as personal effects and papers that belonged to
Yachi in the Things.
Speaker 2: You know. Coogan's definitely a left winger, but of a
more serious type.
Speaker 3: And I mean the fact that some of these personages
we're willing to participate in the book project speaks for itself.
It's not a purely punitive treatment, but the real value
of it, especially if you're reading it.
Speaker 2: As a researcher.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of hundred pages of footnotes and endnotes
that are really incredible, including a substantial amount of material
about Johann van Leer's about They're vague and the National
Socialists distance in Argentina and then in the Near East,
and I highly recommend that book to students of the
subject matter as well as people who are just curious
students of history want to get a better understanding of
the subject matter. But I raised Coogan not just because
I like that book, but you know, again, he's one
of the only authors I know of who has a
deep understanding of this phenomenon and the efforts, particularly of
the SS and the SD to curate a national socialist
sensibility among Maslim populations. This ramped up in earnest in
the final year and a half of the war, when
it became clear that en zeg was no longer possible.
And it's not because everybody was delusional.
Speaker 2: It's not owing to some.
Speaker 3: Desperation born of manpower shortages or any of those.
Speaker 2: Confabulations. It was because.
Speaker 3: At Base and particularly in the s S, the truly
diehard national socialists who were ideologically committed. They had a
profoundly Hegelian view of the war and of the historical
process generally, and of course Germany was not a stranger
to these sorts of apocalyptic conditions. We're talking about our
Thirty Years War series. I think in the first episode
we were talking about a Hitler himself and Spear. Speaking
of Spear as well as many personages within the traditional
military establishment as well as the National Socialist.
Speaker 2: Cadre that took over the government.
Speaker 3: The historical polestar of these people was the Thirty Years
War and the destruction of Germany, the destruction of the
First Reich and the scattering of the German.
Speaker 2: Racial organism to the proverbial four wins.
Speaker 3: And in their mind, it had taken centuries to reconstitute.
Speaker 2: The German nation and to.
Speaker 3: Bring years into a organizational modality whereby it could fulfill
its historical mission, and in their estimation, this had taken
close to three centuries. So there was an understanding that
a similar process was emergent in nineteen forty four forty five,
and there was the added challenge of a world dominated
by the communists and by the American Zionist occupation that
was looming. Both of these challenges were related. That's why
these ideological schema were quite literally allied, but they were
also very distinguishable in terms of what they represented and
what they were trying to accomplish, and in terms of
creating a global political regime and the tactics required to
counteract those efforts to break people up. Their identitarian characteristics
and historical memory were somewhat different depending on whether the
populations in question were those situated in the East or
in the West, and Maslim populations were under unique pressure
from the communists, and that this endured throughout the existence
of the Soviet Union. The Islamic revolt was one of
many proximate causes that ultimately brought brought the Soviet Union down.
I think that's irrebutable. So that's something that is important
to understand here, and that's one of the reasons why
this remains a relevant, irrelevant subject matter. It's not just
some sort of trivial curiosity related to aspects of the
war that are sort of not commonly emphasized, but the
role of the Grand movety to to change focused just
a little bit. The way that he's cast in the
historical record is somewhat incorrect. There's people with a superficial
understanding of national socialism and there's some Palestinian liberation is
to mean well, but they they're somewhat conceptually impoverished in
their understanding of the historical record. They cast the movet
he as almost like a Palestinian Naser. That's not really accurate.
I mean the point that I believe if he can
be analogized to any contemporary it'd be said Kutu. And
if you know anything about Islam, and particularly highest Sunni Islam,
the role of a moftie is not that of a
political soldier. It's different. There's definitely a partisan aspect that
goes up saying, but the move he also he didn't
have a sense of pan Arabism. What became sort of
the rallying cry of the of the resistance in the
Near East, which was a combination of Pan Arabism and
a an East block aligned but this but discernibly non
communist uh sort of militant socialism. That was not what
he viewed as the way forward for Palestinians. And he
was absolutely a pan Islamist, but he didn't he didn't
view pan Arabism as a meaningful concept. Then, frankly, it's not.
On the other side, Zionists then and now have tried
cast the move he as sort of a Palestinian Kodriano
or some sort of or some sort of ethnosectarian national
wist who's a mirror of themselves. Of themselves who wanted
to annihilate Jewelry owing to some sort of highly binary,
zero sum concept of racial and sectarian struggle in the region.
That's naked propaganda. And interestingly, when people in the Churchill government,
who are particularly sympathetic to designs perspective, tried to convince
the Home Office of these things and as far as
trying to push the British authorities is trying to capture
the Al Husseini. This was quickly quashed and British intelligence
simply refused to pursue it. And there was an internal
memo that indicated that.
Speaker 2: This was.
Speaker 3: A propaganda effort devised by Zionus on the ground, who
were concerned about a leadership cadre reconstituting among their enemies,
which they pretty successfully decapitated by this juncture. And to
be clear that mof he was in exile from nineteen
thirty six on going to the Arab revolt, the Arab
revolt is complicated. I don't want to deep dive into
that now. Briefly, it was a general strike. It was
it uprising as more and more European Jews streamed into Palestine.
It became clear that the Palestinians were going to be
ethnically cleansed, okay, And we talked about how the the
British were inconsistent and how they responded to ethnosectarian violence
and you know, categorical attacks upon Palestinians to realize annihilation
oriented goals by the Desions. So this represented an existential fear.
It wasn't just a question of resistance to Palestine being
dominated by a hostile Jewish majority. On the ground, there
was an element among the Palestinians under Arms two that
had always favored an armed struggle, and their reasoning was
we've got to pull the trigger now before the situation
deteriorate the point that it's no longer possible. There was
a a pious Islamist organization that was also highly militant,
led by eas Alden al Cassam.
Speaker 2: He was a shakh.
Speaker 3: And something of a lesser aristocrat, but it was also
a dedicated revolutionary and as early as the mid nineties
twenties he was demanding that money that was coming into
mosques the equivalent of alms, be spent on arms and
military needs rather than on you know, proselytizing and and
traditional ecclesiastical to activities and things of that nature, you know,
the equivalent they're in. This caused tension between him and
al Husseini. He'd approached al Husseini and and tried to
cultivate his friendship and asked to be brought on to
the Supreme Moslem Council as an itinerant preacher of sorts,
and Husseini turned him away, but did help him find
a permanent place and a mosque that would be more
receptive to his revolutionary concepts. This is due to some
people too, including again some Palestinian liberationists who mean well
today as being perfidest and Alossini being political. I don't
think that's fair. And Alssini also knew that his people
weren't in a position to win at that moment. He
was continuing to try and curate a relationship with the
British too, out of necessity, owing to again the hopelessness
of the military situation at that juncture. But as it
happened in nineteen thirty six, a general strike did kick off,
and once the uprising began, the move he stowed with Palestine.
He was very much accused though of fermenting this and
being a leader of it, the British commanders on the
ground who he curated a relationship with, I believe they
talked to the Foreign Office and British intelligence and that's
why the move he wasn't harmed, He was allowed to
live in exile relatively undisturbed at that juncture, because you know,
it was it was clear that he wasn't devising a
revolutionary resistance movement, He wasn't trying to force a kinetic
outcome to then extend conditions. But this was when Alo
was saying, he began approaching representatives of the Third Reich,
and they began approaching him, and we talked about gottlab
Burger and elements within the both the Algass and in
various party offices who viewed this as imperative, and Alo
saying he only met with Hitler face to face once
in November nineteen forty one. But the fact that he
met him at all is remarkable because it was not
easy to get access to Hitler. What he was able
to procure Hitler guaranteed and he convinced al Duce to
co sign this guarantee that after the defeat of the
British Empire Palestine would become an Arab state and it
would be ethnically cleansed of Jews. Whether the Mufti would
become the ruler of that state, I find that unlikely. Again,
there's it's complicated how traditional Islamic authority is organized. You
need to be clear. People get the people have this
misconception because first of all, the look at the place
like Iran, and of course there's a there's a sectarian
divide there because She and Sunni are very different, and
even within those broad sects, there's there's there's there's differences
within Sunni Islam and She Islam that are profound. The
Iranian government and called itself the revolutionary government because it's
not this reactionary regime. The FUCO one of the few
essays he wrote that's oriented towards ideological practice, that that's
a in a you know, direct capacity. He went to
Tehran as the revolution was underway, and he made the
point that this was something people hadn't seen before. It
wasn't some reactionary regime of clerics. It was very much
an Islamic movement, but it was a hybrid ideology that
was a truly third position, as tendency in the true sense.
Okay Al Hussini didn't represent some Sunni of that.
Speaker 2: And also.
Speaker 3: Once what became the Palestinian Liberation movement, it's proverbial dna
is in the Arab revolt and in the men who
they took inspiration from and the move he wasn't really
part of that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He definitely was a partisan, and he took on the
function of a political soldier as he became insinuated into
the SS organization. But military command and political credibility became
inextricably bound up in theater, and that some of that
duras to this day. But you know, it's not this
idea that the move He simply approached Hitler because he
had ambitions to become Emperor of Palestine or the the
boss of the Arab Committee or something, and wanted to
parlay that into authority over a Palestinian ethno state that
was going to emerge. At NC guy that I don't
think that's credible. What was important was that he got
a guarantee from Hitler.
Speaker 2: He had the patronage of the Axis, and.
Speaker 3: It guaranteed that forces would be brought to bear, and
Hitler made clear to him. Hitler said he believed in
the Arab people, and he believed in the in the
Santy's cause, which I think was true. But he also
said that the German Reich had essential interests in the
region and they expected the Palestinians to help those things
be realized. So obviously it was a real politic aspect
of this too. But both men came to realize also
that this had become a planetary struggle, you know, And
by November nineteen forty one, America wasn't as a I
mean America the fact it was at war with Germany
from September ninety forty one onwards, the Reich was the
Wehrmacht was closing in on Moscow, and it became clear
that the struggle was global in character, and even after
final victory was realized, which appeared to be eminent as
a November nineteen forty one, no Germany needed allies in
newly liberated, formally colonial spaces.
Speaker 2: But there was also a basic.
Speaker 3: Affinity and that's coded into national socialism through influences like
Schopenhauer and things, and the German character generally. Hitler wasn't
some orientalists like von Weiers, but I think it's clear
to all but the most literal and binary minds. When
I'm getting it and towards that I mentioned before about
Oprah group and Feler and Genaha Devafansis got lab Burger,
who I think was a fascinating individual, and he was
a key personage in forcing the through policies within the
SS relating to the alliance with not just the Palestinians
and al Hussini, but with the Islamic nationalities in the East.
He clarified. Berger said, and I'm paraphrasing the relationship between
Islam and national socialism. There's a vocush imperative, but what
is not intended is a synthesis.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 3: Quote it is not intended to find a synthesis of
Islam and national socialism or to impose national socialism in
the Maslims. Rather, national socialism is to be seen as
the genuine, focused German worldview, while Islam is to be
seen as the genuine focused Arabic worldview. He was using
Arabic as a stand in for I mean, obviously the
land of the Prophet and the Arabic language and Muhammad
himself means that Arab cultural forms have an outsized significance
in Islam. He was using Arabic in the Arabic world
view in a Shpangalarrian sense to include, you know, in
most of the Islamic element under the Reich authority, where
we're not Arab. And again there was this emphasis on
Sarajevo in specifically in Bosnia.
Speaker 2: As the.
Speaker 3: As the heartland of European Islam, and thus they were
to be given priority. And Berger emphasized that. And mind you,
Berger was h he was second only to the Reich's
fear ss Himmler in his rank. He had a rank
equivalent to Paul Hauser and scept Dietrich.
Speaker 2: So he.
Speaker 3: His word was a law within the organization. Then he
clarified that the Moslems, the Balkans were racially part of
the Germanic world well ideologically and spiritually part of the
Arab world. So he said, among other things, these Balkan
Moslem peoples, they represent, you know what the complimentary aspects
are of this alliance and this unity of veldenstrong against
communism and jewelry. And he continued by saying, through the
deployment of a Moslim SS division, speaking of the Bosniacs
here they're made hereby for the first time. The established
a connection between Islam and national socialism, or rather between
the Arab and the Germanic world, and an open, honest
basis as this division in terms of blood and race
is influenced by the North in terms of ideology and
contrast by the orient I think I got into in
the last episode. I tried to clarify by reference to
my outlines what I covered, So stop me if I'm
being redundant. But in nineteen forty four the SS head
office at behest of Burger, they established two Islamic centers
for religious education. The first one, which I think I
got into a bit, was open in April nineteen forty four.
It was in a small town called Kuben in Brandenburg.
This was this was the e Mom Institute, and we
talked about emoms in NAVAF and SS and the important
role they played at not just division level of a
company and even platoon level. And this El Hussini himself
attended a ceremony with the gott Love Burger and an
email nam Hussein Disozo, who was a Bosniac. More significant,
particularly to the subject matter that I started this discussion
with with what was colloquially called the ss Mullus School
it was, it didn't formally It wasn't formally established until
November forty four, and once again there was an inauguration
ceremony tailored to celebrate enough to size a Germanic Maslim alliance.
The opening speech was proffered by Walter Schellenberg, and the
end of the Soviet was interesting because again it it
seemed very much codd Swards of post war world and
proceeding under hostile occupation without without resulting the language that
suggested what in the national social ideological culture would be
looked upon pejoratively as defeatism. But the crux of Schellensberg's
speech was the historical associations, the traditional bonds between the
kaiser Reich and Daryl Islam, the longstanding support for Moslim
peoples who were besieged by Jewish tyranny. And it emphasized
too that the Soviet Union, by its very existence it
represented a slow.
Speaker 2: Not just on.
Speaker 3: Focused ways of life, but on all confessional practices and
cultural spread Usians first among them Islam, and Schellenberg specifically
said that the focused core of Russia had been destroyed
for all practical purposes and totally deracinated, and that the
non Russian people under occupation and on the periphery of
the Soviet Empire were similarly being targeted for destruction and
their fate would be the same as that of the
Russians if an effective resistance wasn't cultivated, and the only
way that that could be realized is by the dual
commits meant of to racial hygiene and confessional piousness. And
in this respect, Schellenberg said Islam was the quote custodian
of the Eastern people and their biological substance as well
as their confessional heritage in linear terms back to the
time of the Prophet, and he concluded by saying that
because the Bolsheviks lack traditions of the past, they're not
long for this earth, but that Moslims are able to
cope with the future no matter what hardships emerge, because
not just to the racial purity of the several populations
who are very tribally randed who constituted the Eastern Mauslims,
but that basically their faith would carry them through the
historical destruction of Bolshevism and the and the racially impure
uh interventioned who are the standard bearers of the Bolshevik ideology,
who are really just the vestigial remnants of the Russian
racial corps that died in the Soviet death camps.
Speaker 2: Very very heady stuff, not.
Speaker 3: Not not typical, just sort of grab bag propaganda, you know,
And this is important. And the Moullas School it was,
it was far larger than the Email School. It was
based at this villa in uh, this affluent neighborhood outside
of Dresden. There was this Victor Klemper. He was this
Jewish writer who curiously, you know, didn't get like shot
shot into space or something by the Nazi Holocaust. But
he was a lot of people, I think, including Shier,
William Shier, who wrote a very silly book that a
lot of quote historians hold out as some great treatment
of the Third Reich. Of course Shira pulled it. There
was a rise and fall of the Third Roag and
then there was the Nightmare Years. That's a that's an
objective and not at all a sterical title for a
history book. But Victor Klemfery he kept diaries and he
documented his observations on various things.
Speaker 1: They really like to keep diaries, don't.
Speaker 3: They, Well, to be fair, that was something people did
in those days. I mean I'm talking actual people, not
fictitious diaries of you know, girls who wrote like Judy
Bloom books that were marketed for like nineteen seventies junior
high students. You know most I mean, Goebels was especially prolific.
But Yodel kept a diary, So did Kitle, so did Rosenberg,
Alfred Rosenberg, so did Erhard Milch. But no, I take
your point. But Klemper's diary I believe was real. And
he noted he was observing, obviously from without the you know,
what was going on in this old but rather stately property,
which I believe is a repurpose to hotel in blasphets
this this neighborhood of Dresden, and he said there was
a quote mysterious Moslem study group there.
Speaker 2: This if you want to relate.
Speaker 3: But I uh, when I read that, I just I
had this funny image of this like little neverish dude
like kicking out at uh at things like ss going
out of this coughing building and say, what's what is
going on?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe uh, I.
Speaker 3: Am from the silly, silly kind of ship like that,
But uh moving on.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 3: Uh, it can't uh something that something you can't you
can't you can't chug this up to.
Speaker 2: Some sort of you know, effort to corral.
Speaker 3: Halfless pow us in the frontline service or something the
flesh out the ranks of.
Speaker 2: Of devastated divisions and battalions. You know.
Speaker 3: The people suggest that sort of thing, don't know the
the subject matter. And there was a a a guy
named Rayner Shakcha Olshacha. He was assigned to set things
up in the Moulla school and uh make it culturally
compliant with the students who'd be attending it. So old
Shaka ol Shatcha. He decked out the interior building in
ways that reflect did Islamic architectural styles. The main entrance
hall was decorated with a mosaic patterns, specifically after mosques
in Central Asia. There was a lot of you know,
Islamic artifacts on loan from museums in the Greater German Reich.
There was Kuranic verses and calligraphy painted into the walls.
There was a prayer niche in one of the main
assembly areas. There was an ornate prayer hall which was
sort of the center of activity.
Speaker 2: On the ground floor, you know, And so I mean
the ass went out of their.
Speaker 3: Way to create an authentically Islamic environment, and they went
as far as.
Speaker 2: To hire.
Speaker 3: Kurt Erdman. He was the foremost expert on Islamic culture
and art history in the Oriental department of the Pergamon
Museum in Berlin, and he consulted with architects from Berlin
and Dresden to mock this up. And it took half
a year. You know, there was a great library. It
had Islamic, authentic Islamic texts from France, from Bosnia, from
the Netherlands, including rare, ancient and texts that have been purchased.
In Sarajevo. Around this time, anybody, no matter there, any uh,
any Folks, Deutsche or any any any non Jewish Auslander
could obtain a free Koran from the Propaganda Ministry just
by asking for one. There weren't a lot of Qurans
that have been properly translated into German, so an effort
was made to remedy that by the Propaganda Ministry. And
one of the reasons for these efforts was the s
S wanted to attract top religious scholars and imams to
teach at the school, but also to attend it for
political education and military education within the SS model. And
reading between the lines, you know, again this is the
last year that wore under desperate conditions. They were looking
to build cadres. They were looking to build dedicated national
socialist cadres within these populations for a post war world,
you know. I that should be clear to anybody who
understands what they're looking at. Metaphorically speaking, I think Alan
John Idris or Idris, he was coveted as director of
the Mullus School, but he was still in the service
of the Propaganda Ministry as well as the Foreign Office,
and he was the top man in charge of propaganda
in the Islamic world, and neither the Foreign Office nor
the nor Goebels would let him go, you know. And
again this they were emphasizing the propaganda aspect in the
theater in Palestine as well as in among the nationalities
and in the Soviet Union, and uh of course in
in Bosnia. But the Bosniacs again, they they they were
they were racial Europeans, and most of them were multi
lingualed just because o where they lived, you know, and
they had a privileged position within within the the Reich.
So it was it would have been a redundant to
make them the focus group of these efforts, if you
follow me. But nevertheless, ultimately the propaganda ministry they let
Idris preside over the Moullas School three days a week.
He was young, comparatively charismatic. He was very modern and
had Western habits. He had a great admiration for the
European culture, and he assimilated very well into Germany culturally.
But he was also a very, very UH dedicated Moslim.
He was kind of viewed as the model Maslim national socialist.
He had a son who UH worked as an interpreter
and then ultimately joined UH the Eastern Maslim SS.
Speaker 2: Corps in the final year of the war. And that
obviously was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I anybody who joined that late in the
game knew there's a good chance they weren't coming home.
I mean, he was a dedicated he was coming to
the jihad. But he this also was something of a
propagandic coup.
Speaker 2: You know, look, this wealthy Malas offering up his son
to fight for the Reich. It's no small thing obviously,
you know, and.
Speaker 3: The and the SS UH it says that I'm only
employing Moslims as teachers in the mother school in contrast
to the Wehrmacht and in contrast to other party institutions
that dealt with the education and putical indoctrination of Moslim peoples.
The SS took this very seriously, you know, and that
that tracks with its overall orientation, you know, the It's
a fascinating.
Speaker 2: Sort of.
Speaker 3: Aspect to the Reich's relationship to Romania. You know, Hitler
uh Antonescu and Hitler are very close, and Antonescua was
probably the fears best ally, and I mean Romania sacrificed
tremendously for the Axis cause and also the fact that
they when Stalin began World War two with his War
of Conquest, obviously Romania was very much in the crosshairs
of of Moscow. So there was an existential imperative as
to why they'd welcome the Vermacht deploying its scale there.
But also obviously Escu not only to commit close to
a quarter million men the Barbarossa, but he availed Romania
as a staging ground for a huge component of like
forces and being in operational terms. But later, you know,
Anton Escu. He presided over the brief national legionary state,
and then he banned the Iron Guard owing to what
he viewed as their revolutionary subversion. This was in the
aftermath of this is when Sema had succeeded Kodriano, who'd
been murdered. But the SS famously they backed the Iron
Guard against Kodrianuh, who the fear of himself, you know,
unconditionally back Kadriyanu. That there was an SS ideology into
itself which was very pan European, very revolutionary, very very different,
not just from the Wehrmachten, traditional German society and even
traditional German military culture, but distinguishable from the mainstream of
the NSDAP as well. And I find it fascinating. But
to bring it back to the subject at hand, one
thing that the Mulla School emphasized, and this is another
reason why they insisted on on Moslim teachers exclusively the
theological program. It was very oriented towards overcoming sectarian hostilities,
and in the SS tried to prioritize bridging the divide
between scenes and sites. There's a constant emphasis against religious
sectarianism among Moslems, you know, and traditionally in in Wehrmacht
units where traditionally she and sounes we were segregated, and
the ss were not only refused to do that, but
they pursued an anti sectarian line.
Speaker 2: And the emphasis again was that this schism was contrived
by men who coveted worldly power after the the center
of the prophet of heaven, and that the current struggle
where the the dual.
Speaker 3: Threat in existential terms to the Islamic faith and to
the race of the nationalities and populations that constituted darl Islam.
That calls for a healing of the schism, even were
it not a contrivance promised on worldly.
Speaker 2: And thus.
Speaker 3: Actually vertically corrupt the ambitions, you know. And again the implication,
in my opinion is obvious.
Speaker 2: It's you know, we a political soldier looking ahead circa
nineteen forty four forty five needs to.
Speaker 3: Adopted as primary concern the racial survival of his people
and the continuity of his faith on this planet, you know,
in the face of the dual assault of Zionism and communism,
and will will stop. It's there. I hope this wasn't.
I hope people got something out of this. I mean,
I I presume they did. Because people have been very
nice in their feedback.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, if anything, I would like to hear
more people not talk about Islam like they're a boomer
right after nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean they're they're they're idiots. That's one
of the reasons. I mean, they're we we we've got
Islamic comrades who are great. But beyond that, you know,
I don't. But the same that people lip off at
me about World War two or about the law. It's like, well,
you're the expert, you know how, Like you watch a
lot of you watch a lot of TV, you watch
a lot of cable legacy media, so you're you're an
Islam expert.
Speaker 2: I mean, I that's why.
Speaker 3: That's the reason I emphasize these topics because even in
supposedly dissit encoded spaces, these people are conceptual a literates
by and large, but you can't.
Speaker 2: The only reason I'm trying to get more.
Speaker 3: More guys who have a theological expertise or their background
is you know, in in a Bible, Christianity or Catholicism
or Orthodoxy or Islam, because that's I mean, at the
end of the day, I mean, I like what we've
talked about. It's I'm more a capital T radical traditionist
than I am anything probably. I mean you're talking about
like my political philosophy, you know, I mean, I identify
as a yacky as national socialists.
Speaker 2: But what the uh.
Speaker 3: It's reneeing on. It's Mercia Eliotti, Julius Evil. That's a
substantial part of my canon if you want all it
like that, okay. And there's this kind of dummy anti
intellectualism that's just hostile to theology and religion, you know,
I mean that that's common to any epoch really, you know,
even people I've verad that point with some of our
Orthodox friends and some of our Catholic friends who view
the Medieval era as a period of high culture that's
unduly maligned, which is absolutely true. Casting the Middle Ages
is a sort of hellish time of cultural poverty. I mean,
that's ridiculous. I mean, I don't know how any I
don't know how any Anglophone person can think that way anyway.
I mean arthury and lore and the Ulster cycle. If
you're somebody like me, that's second only to the King
James Bible, you know, you know, like I and that
that that comes out of the horrifying medieval era, you know.
But beyond that, I think some people they kind of
view with the orals colored glasses, they this idea, Oh well,
then there's this, there's this integrated concept, you know that
they mean in terms of trifunctional hypothesis, but they mean
that religious life informed everyday sensibilities. And that's somewhat true.
But I think it was and I think most people
and not about class. This this this doesn't know class
in terms of where these sensibilities are concentrated. But I
think most people even then it was a very kind
of superficial thing. You know, people always gonna look at
scance at you if you take religion seriously and you
want to emphasize it as the subject matter that it is,
is your sort of the topical focus.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I people like that are I don't know,
I mean, I.
Speaker 3: I I've had to get eventuated in tuning out ignorant
people because they're all around me and.
Speaker 2: They're all really noisy. They're a.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, I'm not I'm not here
to educate morons, and I'm not I'm not here to
like listen to assholes lip off on things they don't
know about. So I just the minority of people who
want to talk about serious stuff, and I think like
little fucking kids. I mean, you know, of the people
I want to interact with.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, go over it to Thomas A substack
real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com and
check out his website Thomas seven seven seven dot com.
The t is a seven and you can hook up
with him uh from there. Thank you, Thomas, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you man.